Category: discovery

change, discovery, stress

My Year of Hopefulness – Shifting Ground

Christa Avampato

“A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory.” ~ Arthur Golden, from Memoirs of a Geisha

Lately, my life seems to be a little like an earthquake. I feel like I am always standing on shifting ground. Just when I think I get one part of my life settled, an aftershock throws me off balance. There are some amazing lessons to be learned when we are standing on uncertain ground. And while working through these circumstances is difficult, I am certain that once the dust settles I will be a far better person in every respect.

With shifting ground:

1.) You learn what you want, and what you don’t want.
Things I want: a career that contributes to building a better world, freedom to use my time with more flexibility, to be out and about in the world as much as possible, a close family, close friends, a feeling of connection to my community.

Things I don’t want: to wake up in the middle of my years and find that I didn’t do something because I was scared or because I was worried it would take too long to complete, to “dream” more than I “do”

2.) You learn who you want, and who you don’t want in your life.
People I want: those with commitment and determination. Those who do what they say and say what they do. People who show up, and love fiercely and fearlessly, and take big chances on big dreams. Those who hold at their core honesty, bravery, and empathy. People who know what they want and have the confidence to go for it. People who change the direction of the wind. Kind and generous and those who want to be at cause with the world. People who listen more than they talk.

People I don’t want: those who can’t make up their minds. People who are inconsistent. People who constantly look at what others can get or do for them. People who lack follow-through and commitment. “Idea people” who don’t have the ability or inclination to bring those ideas to life through the honest work of their own two hands. Those who spend an hour with me talking about themselves for 59 minutes and asking me how I’m doing for 1 minute.

3.) You learn to live with less material wealth, and greater purpose.
Last night I spoke to my dear friend, Amy, who is my inspiration when it comes to creating a purposeful life. She told me about a book called The Soul Of Money by Lynne Twist. It’s helping Amy to make the transition from the career she has, which carries a big paycheck and is not what she wants to do, to the career she wants, which has a less certain income stream and a tremendous amount of satisfaction. Twist advocates for our ability to build a meaningful, satisfying life with our own inner resources. It’s an idea we can all get behind – to be motivated by a personal mission, a reason for being, and not a bonus and an annual performance review rating. She shows us that wealth of the heart and mind is at least as importance as the wealth in our bank accounts.

Shifting ground is treacherous. It is filled with doubt and uncertainty. It shakes us to our core, and in the process we find out what sustains us, what makes us glad that we woke up today, what motivates us to build a better tomorrow for ourselves and for others. This is uncomfortable work, though it’s the only way I can see to make the valleys of this journey through life worthwhile.

Disappointment is going to show up at our door at one time or another. People are going to let us down. And how we handle these disappointments, and what we learn from them, in many ways helps us to define who are and who we mean to be. They are teachers, twisted and odd as they may be. The way to learn from the disappointments is to hang on to those who build us up, the circumstances that make us strong, those who can support us in our darkest hour. They make all the difference, and help us climb back to those peaks.

This uncertain ground will pass. The aftershocks eventually die down. Life does get back to normal. And when it does, I know I’ll find that my ground has shifted in a favorable direction.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

books, discovery, fear, friendship, patience, yoga

My Year of Hopefulness – At the End of the Test

Christa Avampato

One can’t learn much and also be comfortable. One can’t learn much and let anybody else be comfortable.

On Friday night I went for a walk with my friend, Dan. We wound our way through Central Park talking about recent events in our lives, challenges we’re facing, things we’re excited about. We got onto the subject of testing. When recently talking to a friend of his about a particular circumstance he’s working though the friend said, “Like Job, you are being tested.” Dan’s response was a simple question, “What do I get if I pass the test?” I’ve been thinking about that question all weekend.

As I was working through my yoga practice this morning, I was thinking about the idea of comfort versus discomfort. Times of testing are often uncomfortable times. We just want to get through them as quickly as possible. We want the shortest path to relief. Yoga teaches us to be comfortable being uncomfortable, sinking into the pose, going deeper, as opposed to pulling away often helps us. Perhaps the shortest relief to discomfort is through, similar that old saying of “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Every day that saying makes more sense to me.
Maybe Charles Fort is correct: If we shrank away every situation that was challenging, every situation that brought some kind of fear or discomfort, perhaps we’d never learn anything. If we embrace fear, discomfort, and confusion for the sake of learning, maybe challenging times become easier to bear. Maybe learning is the prize at the end of our test. All that’s required of us is patience and commitment. We just have to keep showing up, for ourselves and for one another.
choices, discovery, friendship, hope, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Disappointment as Fuel for Change

Christa Avampato

“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

I’m now nearly 7 months through my 1 year commitment to actively search for hope every day and write about it. I’m in the thick of it and the remaining months of 2009 seem to be just around the bend. This is the side effect of working in a retail-focused business: I’m always one step ahead of myself because the industry I work in demands it. Looking for hope is sometimes an easy task and sometimes a game of hunt and peck. Some days I struggle to find something hopeful and positive, and other days it seems that the world is awash with hope, so much so that it’s hard to take it all in and stay still long enough to write about it. It’s these latter days that I try to focus on most.

I’ve become a fan of daily email delivery of my favorite blogs. I get why tools like Google Reader are valuable; I just prefer to use my gmail inbox as my to-do list. (Thank you, David Pogue, for that insight on email in-boxes!) And I like the idea that my favorite writers are sending me little bits of wisdom directly, or at least I feel like they’re sending them to me directly. Daily Good, a blog that posts a daily story about some piece of goodness in the world, is one of my favorites. Their stories always begin with a quote, and it’s responsible for many of the quotes that populate my “food for thought” section in the right side bar of this blog.

This week Daily Good posted up the quote above from Martin Luther King, Jr. He could have easily made the quote “We must accept disappointment, but we must never lose hope.” Still powerful, still emotional, still inspirational. Instead, he chose to talk about finite disappointment and infinite hope, and link the two together. In my 7 months of writing about hope, I have found disappointment. More than I would have liked.

Just this week, I decided I had accepted enough disappointment. I’d reached the finite limit that Dr. King spoke about and then decided that I could no longer wait to do what I really wanted to do. With the help of some friends who help me think clearly, who help to bolster me up when I get a little bit down, I made a plan to turn all of my attention to what I hope to achieve and away from what’s disappointed me. The hope was there all along, even through the disappointment. I just wasn’t seeing it. We can all do a lot more than hope for a change; there will be no grand arrival and entrance of change. It’s always there – we need only reach out and grab a hold of it.

career, creative process, creativity, discovery, entrepreneurship, friendship, invention, job, relationships, science

My Year of Hopefulness – Lots of ideas

Christa Avampato

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” ~ Linus Pauling, American scientist

It’s a romantic ideal that in a flash of insight we finally come up with a brilliant idea to overcome some challenge. Truth is it takes us time to wrestle a problem to the ground. Lots of ideas have to be considered, tried, tested, and tweaked to get us to an elegant solution.

While Linus Pauling was referencing his own work in science, his quote applies to many areas. Where we live, where we work, and who we spend our time with can take some trial and error before we strike just the right place and people. This is my third try at living in New York, and I think I got it right this time. There have been a lot of ups and downs over the 10 years since I first moved here. Finally, I found a way to make this place home.

Pauling’s quote also holds up in entrepreneurship, too. I’ve now been doing interviews with a variety of entrepreneurs for five months and I’ve asked each of them for advice to others who are considering starting a business. All of them have said to give it a shot, recognizing that it takes a couple of years to really get a business off the ground. We might need to kick around a number of different ideas for businesses before we hit upon one that makes our hearts sing, that makes us want to dive in with everything we’ve got to make it work.

Having lots of ideas requires patience and persistence. We have to be willing to try and try again, and again and again. We need to be patient with ourselves and believe in the slow steady process that leads to true insight and learning. Flashes of quick genius happen once in a while. What is a much more of a sure bet is that if we keep trying new ideas, one will certainly rise to the top.

The photo above is Linus Pauling holding a molecular model. It can be found at: http://osulibrary.orst.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/pauling-qv09-198xi.050.jpg

books, career, creativity, discovery, happiness, innovation, Steve martin, work

Is that a cocoon you’re building?

Christa Avampato

One of the main tenants of Yogic and Buddhist texts is that the world provides the exact teaching we need at the exact moment that we need it. For Christmas, my boss gave me one of the best books I’ve read to date, and I’m only on page 57! Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace. It’s so incredible, that I’m planning on writing a series of posts related to the book. I strongly recommend anyone who works for a living, or who has ever worked for a living, to purchase this book.

I’ve been highlighting like mad, as I am known to do with my books because I think writing in them gives them my own personal touch. I have fought every single impulse to “nest” or “build a cocoon.” I’ve always wanted to feel at home everywhere I go, and wanted to have the freedom to come and go as I please. And then I moved back to New York six months ago, and have a hard time imagining I will ever leave. On page 45 of the book, I read 4 words that helped me realize I must find a way to love this city without needing it. “Cocoons can be paralyzing.” And this isn’t just true for a physical cocoon – an apartment or home – it’s a cocoon we build through relationships, friendships, our family, our job, and our hobbies. The conundrum becomes: “how can I feel safe and secure and confident without feeling stuck in a rut?”

I am not saying that anyone should run out and quit their job, dump their significant other, and move half way around the world to a country whose language they don’t speak. That’s anti-cocooning to the extreme and may land someone is quite a mess of unhappiness. There are ways to keep our outlook fresh while not turning our world upside down, though an occasional shake-up may be needed! Below are a few of my favorites:

1.) Take a vacation to some place new – and I don’t mean to some beach that looks like every other beach you’ve ever been to and lay around in the sun until you are a prime candidate for skin cancer while reading those horrible “beach reads”. I mean get out and meet new people on your vacation. Take a new class. Take a group tour. Learn a foreign language and try to order in a restaurant. Try a new sport. Bringing newness into your life in a foreign place will unlock parts of your personality you may have never known you had.

2.) Make it a point to get out into the world, alone. Some people feel fearful to go anywhere on their own. With kids and a spouse, this can be an especially challenging experience to create. It’s worth the effort. There is something to be said for taking a walk, going for a run, even going shopping, and allowing yourself time to be with yourself. Liking the company you keep in the empty moments is critical to break-through thinking.

3.) Try something you think you will love that is entirely useless. Feeling increasingly crunched for time, we place a premium on activities that are “useful.” I am the queen of utility. I don’t want to buy or receive a single product or experience that isn’t going to “pay off” in some way. This is a dangerous way to think and I know that. It is worthwhile to occasionally do something or buy something for the sheer joy of it. For example, a friend of mine learned Italian despite the fact that the language is not widely spoken outside of Italy. Spanish or French would have been more practical because so many more people in the world speak those languages. Still, he really wanted to learn Italian because he loved the sound of it more than any other language. At the time he saw no utility to learning the language – he did it for the fun of it. Now he’s getting his masters in ESL. Learning Italian gave him an appreciation for how difficult it must be for foreigners who come to the U.S.

4.) If pressed to name my favorite book of all time, I must say Alice in Wonderland. And if pressed for my favorite quote from the book it is “Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Imagine what the world could be like if we followed the Queen’s advice. The impossible can become possible.

5.) And my favorite remedy to staying in a cocoon for too long – question everything. Steve Martin recently wrote a memoir of his life, Born Standing Up. In it, he says the way he created his break- thru comedy act was to question every assumption he or anyone else for that matter made about comedy and performing. I don’t think we should all start playing our favorite childhood game of asking “why?” every time we speak. However, there is value is taking a long hard look at what’s confusing us, troubling us, frustrating us, and re-evaluating possible courses of action. Can we re-imagine our situation, and what it would look like if anything were possible?

While cocoons are sometimes necessary, decidedly remaining in them until the cows come home will not helps us to live originally, and living originally may be the most worthwhile task we can ever take on.
apple, career, discovery, dreams, innovation

Realism isn’t the road to success

Christa Avampato

This week I spoke to a friend of mine and our conversation turned, as it usually does, to entrepreneurship. Like me, she isn’t part of the corporate cookie cutter mold that defines many people who get their MBAs. I like to think of us as trail blazers, people who carve their own way through the world. We have a hard time in large companies because they prefer us to stay on the sidewalk and we’d prefer to be stomping around in the grass.

Recently my friend told a family member of hers that she didn’t think she was destined to stay in her corporate job for too long, and was very interested in starting her own business. The family member’s response – “well, you have to be realistic.” I would argue that no, you don’t have to be realistic when it comes to career aspirations, and I would argue that if you are ever going to be happy in a career, you had better not settle for anything realistic.

This disdain for realism may come from my days in working in theatre; it may be genetic; I’m a Pisces – that could be the cause. The world of dreaming, imagination, and wild aspirations is really the only world I understand and in which I feel at home. I have to draw from some of the people I most admire and again, must reference Apple’s commercial that salutes “the crazy ones.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUfH-BEBMoY

Einstein, Amelia Earhart, Picasso, Martin Luther King, Jim Henson. They were not the slightest bit realistic, and in the end their defiance is what saved them and inspired us. Here’s to hoping that we all fight the urge to be realists and forge ahead towards dreams.

The photo above can be found at: http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/images/henson.jpg

career, creativity, discovery, work

Rule breakers by nature

Christa Avampato

Every once in a while, I hear a broad, sweeping generalization that stops me in my tracks. Today, I was talking to someone about corporate recruiting at large companies and how much effort and funding they spend on recruiting and branding events at top universities. The trouble with recruiting the best and brightest to corporate America is that corporations don’t know how to keep them. Students from top universities don’t want to work for someone else. When placing bets, the students will bet on themselves. They’re bred to have a tremendous amount of self-confidence and they firmly believe that they know best. So, when confronted with a rigid corporation that can’t flex, they flee.

There are a few key qualifiers with this generalization. There are bright people at all schools, not just those with a high rank. I went to two fantastic universities, and I was very lucky to be a part of both. And while I met a slew of very smart people in both places, I also met a fair number of people who made me question the admissions standards. And to be certain, large corporations are not devoid of bright people. On the contrary, there are often many intelligent people rising through the ranks.

I don’t think it’s intellect that separates the different tiers of schools, nor the students who attend them. My belief is that it is all about attitude. From the time I was 18, I was held up to a ridiculously high standard in my academic life. Those without self-confidence didn’t make it through – the system beat them up and then beat them out. What top schools are left with are a student body who truly believes they can do ANYTHING so long as they work hard enough and want it bad enough.

And this circles back to the tough part for corporations: they don’t give the vast majority of team members the opportunity to do anything they want. Their rigid rules and love of processes stifle the very talent they worked so hard to get. A word to the wise: if large companies want talent that will drive growth and move the company forward, that talent must be given the latitude to do exactly what they were hired to do – think different and act accordingly.

The photo above can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/kathryn.davidson/Penn/photo#5103173644839047218

business, career, change, creativity, discovery, dreams, experience, Google, innovation, society, technology

Get your head in the clouds

Christa Avampato

I spend about 8 hours on my computer, and roughly 10% of that time belongs to some Google application. I stand in awe of a system that can pull up exactly what I’m looking for, regardless of how obscure the subject, in a fraction of a second. Until today, I had resigned myself to the fact that there was some magic Google elf pulling the info for me. I have confirmed that not only is there an elf, there could actually be a million of them out there in the Googlesphere, known increasingly as a “cloud”.

While it focuses on Google and one engineer’s story, Business Week’s cover story this week talks broadly about how our information world is increasingly being built upon this idea of clouds, a group of hundreds of thousands of computers that are all bolted together to store massive quantities of data. While many companies are struggling this holiday season to stay afloat, Google is contemplating world domination of information. Their mantra can be described as “Whatever you can dream, dream it bigger.” Imagine being at a company that tells you you’re wildest dreams are too small, and that you need to formulate projects that are far more outlandish than even your wildest expectations.

There is a lesson in this wild dream making: every dream can be broken down into very small pieces that can be handled by individual “cloud elves” and then aggregated to get you exactly to where you need to be, all in about half a second. And there is no finite number of tasks. The possibilities are truly endless.

While many companies are in the mode of tempering expectations, pulling in spending, and plummeting morale this holiday season, Google is doing the exact opposite. They are determined to fly high and make sense of the massive amount of knowledge out there. They are so optimistic about what they are capable of accomplishing that they feel these clouds may ultimately push the limits of human imagination. Talk about a tipping point! We have been told for centuries that the human imagination is the most powerful tool on Earth – is it possible that when we pool our imaginations together, we can build something larger than our own sense of creativity?

One last astonishing thing about Google. In all of its success and dreaming, they maintain a public humility that is staggering. They are absolutely fearless when it comes to failure so long as there is learning involved. Their CEO, arguably one of the most powerful and wealthiest men on the planet, sits in a cubicle and moves around from building to building so as to interact with different people at all levels of the organization. And he responds to emails from people at all levels at a unbelievable rate. He is respectful of people’s time, both on and off the job. With someone like this at the helm, it’s no wonder that Google believes in defying limits.

The Business Week article can be found at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_52/b4064048925836.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories

The picture above can be found at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/07_52/B4064magazine.htm

discovery, New York

Diagon Alley on the Upper West Side

Christa Avampato

It’s amazing what we can discover in our own backyard. Recently, I came across a New York Times slide show that featured Pomander Walk, one of the most highly guarded streets in New York City. I’d never heard of it. It’s two blocks from my apartment.

I hopped out of the subway today after running my errands and took a walk down 94th Street. A leasing office, an acupuncturist, and then a gate behind which is a walk through to 95th Street lined on both sides by colorful row homes with strange remnants of a time gone by, such as outdoor dumbwaiters. It was built in the 1920’s and resembles a small street in London that was made famous by Lewis N. Parker in his play by the same name.

There is an enormous and heavy iron gate that blocks off the street on 94th and 95th Streets. It sits like a little jewel of gingerbread houses in a neighborhood dominated by Gothic architecture, gargoyles, and baby carriages. Humphrey Bogart is among its famous past residents.

This is one of the things I love so much about this city – on these streets, in these buildings, my mind is free to imagine and wonder what incredible lives and stories played out here. And now, for the most part, all of what remains are the buildings themselves, standing silently by, holding the secrets and histories of those who inhabited them, even if just for a little while.